Once in a while you regret things in life and alot of the times you find yourself reliving the past. This week was one of those weeks. I unloaded my beloved Defender 90 to a good friend and ever since that day I knew it was one of those “why did I do that” moments. So as weeks went by I found myself looking at Defenders every day and watching the prices soar to unobtainable status not only locally but pretty much on the entire west coast. Prices for Defenders doubled in the past 3 years and some have even tripled (low mileage NAS models).

d90

I decided to look out of state (pretty much every and any state that was selling them). I searched Craigslist, Autotrader, Forums, you name it, I’ve looked and what I found was that the price of these NAS D90’s are constant. Random finds of right hand drive Land Rovers, grey market, and some of them that say they’re “100% legit” but who really knows. I wasn’t about to gamble on one after hearing a few of them have been crushed due to improper importing.

Out of nowhere popped this ad from Boise, Idaho. The price seemed too good to be true. Was it that nobody wanted to take a trip to Boise or was it that the seller didn’t care to see how much these were going for these days. Priced pretty much at the sticker price in 1995, this one-owner Defender was mine. The owner ordered it with a ton of options. From the all metal hard top to it being fully carpeted, this D90 seemed to have it all. It was even equipped with factory Air Conditioning which the owner added a few years later after when the ac won’t turn on.

One of the coolest things about the truck was that it had an operational cel phone from back in the 90s. Here’s Brian pretending to talk on the phone.

The scenery of Boise / Oregon is spectacular.

You don’t ever see the sky like this where we’re from. Everything was so vivid.

If there was a time to be scared, it was now. No reception for 130 miles and this little town of Mcdermitt had only 2 places open to eat. The gas station or this small casino / cafe. Brian and I noticed nobody but Semi’s at the parking lot so we parked and headed in. To our surprise the food was actually pretty good (we were at the starving window but don’t let this review get you. try it if you’re ever near).

We stopped by Winnemucca. It wsas our last stops before reaching Reno.

Mark Arcenal
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